Sustainability

Clean Energy to build CNG stations for multiple agencies, school district

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. will construct new compressed natural gas (CNG) stations for Arlington Transit (ART) in Arlington County, Va.; Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE) in Long Island, N.Y.; and North Kansas City (Mo.) School District, which is set to become the largest school district in the U.S. to transition its school bus fleet to CNG.

“Despite lower oil prices, Clean Energy continues to add fueling partnerships across all our transportation markets,” said Andrew J. Littlefair, president/CEO of Clean Energy. “No matter if they are with a school district, municipality or trucking company, managers of large fleets are looking for a cleaner fuel that reliably costs less and does not have volatile price swings. Natural gas continues to meet their needs.”

Additional agreements across transportation market segments of transit were also announced:

NICE has awarded Clean Energy the contract to design, build and operate and maintain a new CNG station that will, upon completion, replace its existing Mitchel Field station, and operate and maintain the existing CNG stations. The five-year contract valued at just over $13 million will extend the partnership between NICE and Clean Energy and will support a fleet of over 200 CNG buses. Clean Energy currently supports another 100 CNG buses at an additional station and provides a total of 4.6 million GGEs of CNG annually for the NICE bus fleet. Completion of the new station is expected for summer 2017.

Clean Energy has been contracted by W.M. Schlosser Co. to build a fast-fill CNG station at a new bus depot being constructed for ART, which will initially deploy 25 new CNG transit buses that are expected to consume 225,000 DGEs of CNG a year. ART has plans to grow the fleet to 75 CNG buses.

The North Kansas City School District will replace 124 school buses with new CNG buses with an option to purchase an additional 30 over the next 10 years. Clean Energy will construct a new station that includes fast-fill and time-fill fueling options using two Clean Energy Compression (CEC) compressors as well as modifying a maintenance facility to facilitate CNG buses. The 15-year contact will be funded through financing secured by the District and is a joint-partnership between the North Kansas City School District, Clean Energy and Midwest Bus Sales, based in Bonner Springs, Kan., which will supply the District’s new CNG school buses. This transition for the 20,000-student School District will begin for the 2016 school year when the station is scheduled to be operational and is expected to achieve a cumulative reduction of more than 5,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the 10-year span.

The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) ordered an additional 80 buses that will fuel at a Clean Energy operated and maintained station, which is expected to be an incremental 700,000 DGEs of CNG annually.

Public transit agencies and businesses voluntarily choose to join the APTA Sustainability Commitment program and pledge to implement processes and actions that create continuous improvements in sustainability.